Picnik

Picnik is one of the internet's coolest utilities. I didn't think I'd end up using it too often when I first heard about it, but I end up using it several times a week. It's just too convenient and too cool not to.

Picnik is a photo editing utility. The program itself is all flash-based, and the interface is smooth, fun, and very easy to grasp. It's not really geared toward top-end photoshop users, but it's more than sufficient for minor photo editing, and there's lots of room for novices to expand into. They're also adding more features all the time, so I suspect any digital scrapbookers out there might also find this to be very valuable.

All the regular editing features are provided, like resizing, cropping, levels, and colour adjustments. There's also a "pro" account you can upgrade to for $25/year which adds access to all kinds of fonts, shapes, photo frames, and digital effects like turning your photo into a pencil sketch and creating HDR images. Again, probably not really worth it to the gearheads, but way, way worth it if you're looking to ramp up the fun level of your image editing.

There's way too much great stuff about the site to mention here. But for me, the true convenience is how it can access your photos from Flickr, Webshots, Picassa, Photobucket, and even Facebook -- so you can load, edit, and save all through the Picnik interface, without having to download anything. And that's how it should be.

Link to Picnik

Vector Magic

Vector Magic is an awesome utility developed at Stanford that turns ordinary bitmapped photos or line art into vector graphics. It's fast, it's free, and it apparently outperforms Adobe Live Trace and Corel PowerTRACE -- which also makes it wicked.

You can see pretty much what it's capable of in the picture above. There are some more great samples to view on the Vector Magic site. The bitmap I played with didn't come out perfectly, but it was pretty darn close, and any modifications it needed could be done easily in Illustrator. This is a really handy site for anyone doing a lot of desktop publishing. I'm looking forward to playing with it as the software develops.

Link to Vector Magic

Proxy.org

I've been looking for a good anonymous proxy for some time now. Mostly so I could watch streaming video of Grey's Anatomy online. But it turns out proxies have another use -- and this is protecting your privacy.

You may not realize it, but websites capture a lot of information about who's visiting them. There may be times, such as when you're surfing from work or some other registered domain, when you don't want people to be able to trace your referrer or your IP address. You should be using an anonymous proxy at times like these.

Proxy.org is a site that sends any URL you enter through an anonymous proxy, so you can surf those sites with confidence. It chooses a proxy randomly from a list of over 4000 proxies; unfortunately, quality does vary a little, so you may not be able to post to someone's blog or run scripts through the proxy you're given. In those cases, I recommend hitting the service a few times until you get a good proxy assigned to you. Or -- what the hell -- find a proxy you like and stay with it!

Link to Proxy.org

Multibabel

Lost in Translation is a fun little tool, held together with a Perl script and powered by Altavista's Babelfish translator. It takes the text you enter and translates it through several languages before returning it to English.

It's described on the site as the game of Telephone, but I think it's a lot more like Engrish. The one big fault is that sometimes a word will be translated which is not easily translated back, so you will end up with foreign language artifacts in your final English text.

Some examples:

• I think we're alone now, there doesn't seem to be anyone around. translates to Nontask that we are only hour, I look like here, all same that one to be around.


• She's buying a stairway to heaven. translates to Stairs of purchase one with the sky.


• You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave. translates to They can control, when it appreciates, but you cannot never go.

Link to Lost in Translation
Link to Babelfish

10 Minute Mail

Need an e-mail address fast? This site has taken over from Mailinator as my new favourite disposable e-mail site. 10 Minute Mail provides you with an e-mail address that expires in 10 minutes -- but you do have the option to renew your address for another 10 minutes if the mail you're expecting hasn't arrived. Perfect for those times when you need to register for some crap-ass service but don't want to give up your real address.

Link

Holiday Excuse Generator

It's that time of year again. And in addition to working, volunteering, and living your life, you've also got to squeeze in shopping, social functions, and parties with every group of friends you have. So if you need an excuse to help keep your sanity or prevent alcohol poisoning, this one's got you covered. It has the option of sending your excuse out once it's generated, and has some cute eye candy to keep you interested while it's finding your perfect excuse.

Link

Free Online File Conversion

Zamzar is a very user-friendly site that provides a file conversion service for files up to 100Mb in size. It's very easy to use: browse to the file or files (multiple files have to be the same type), choose the filetype you want to convert to, provide your e-mail address, and blammo! The files get e-mailed directly to you! And with even stupid Hotmail -- I mean Windows Live Mail -- offering 2Gb of space right now, this shouldn't cause anyone any hardships.

Link

Free Text Messaging Service

I think I may be one of the last people on the face of the earth without a cell phone. The problem is that I want the gadgets but I don't want to be in constant contact. I leave my house to get away from the phone, not to take it with me.

"You should get a cell phone," my buddy Rob said, "so I can text you." Texting has somehow become the "killer app" of cell phones, which I find especially hilarious because cell phones already have a brilliant and perfectly natural method of communication built in. But texting is fun, so they tell me, and in some places it's far cheaper than standard cell phone rates, so that explains much of its popularity.

But even without a cell phone, I can use txtDrop to text message my friends for free. The site is very straight-forward, with only three fields to fill out and a button to push. Now I'm half-way home: if I can find a good site that will let me receive texts, I may not need a cell phone after all (but I will need a wireless card for my Palm).

Link

Snacksby

A few years ago I had this idea for a countertop recipe appliance that would synch to the internet and pull down recipes based on what you have in your cupboard. Like a lot of great ideas I've come up with, this languished into obscurity, and I started using AllRecipes.com for my cooking needs. (And, FWIW, AllRecipes.com remains a pretty good, if hard to navigate, site.)

But today I chanced across Snacksby, a recipe site that gives you options based on the ingredients you enter in a field at the top of the screen. It looks to be a fun site, with different recipes tagged with "snackonomies" like vegetarian and low-calorie, and even provides ingredient substitutions if you're out of cloves or something. It also knows about measurements, so it won't pull up a recipe requiring a dozen eggs if you've only got two.

There's a link on the front page from comments to a review at LifeHacker:

Great idea but completely worthless at the moment given that they currently have less than a dozen recipes in there and are relying on users to fill the database.

Fair enough; but as another commenter posted, user-edited content is pretty easy to get. And once this does fill up, it'll be just what I'm looking for!

Update: check out this great message letting me know that they couldn't find a recipe for me!

SNACKSLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old chicken stock but we shall eat relish of
it: I found you recipes not.

YOU
I was the more decieved.

SNACKSLET
Get thee to a grocery. Why wouldst thou be a
cooker of nothing? I am myself indifferent honest,
but yet I should accuse me of such things that it
were better my mother had not borne me: I am very
gluttonous, revengeful, ambitious, with more recipes at
my beck than I have cards to write them on,
imagination to give them shape, or time to cook them
in. What should such gourmets as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant chefs,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a grocery.
Where're your cookbooks?

YOU
At home, my lord.

SNACKSLET
Let the pantry doors be shut upon them, that they may play
fruitless nowhere but in'r own kitchen. Farewell.

YOU
O, help him, you sweet heavens!

SNACKSLET
If thou dost cook, I'll give thee this compost
for thy dinner: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as
snow, thou shalt not escape famine. Get thee to a
grocery, go; farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs
cook, cook for a fool; for wise men know well enough
what illusory meals you make for them. To a grocery, go,
and quickly too. Farewell.

YOU
O heavenly powers, restore him!

SNACKSLET
I have heard of your garnishes too, well enough; God
has given your dishes one face, and you make them
another: you salt, you drizzle, and you accent, and
put ketchup on God's creatures, and make your wantonness
your diet. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath
made me hungry. I say, we will have no more meals:
those that have already, all but one, shall
eat; the rest shall starve as they are. To a
grocery, go.

Exeunt

Oh, Snacksby!
Doubt thou the stars are fire,
Doubt that the sun doth move,
Doubt truth to be a liar,
But never doubt I love.

Link

Google Maps Pedometer

One of the great things about Google is how most of their cool stuff is released with SDKs (software development kits), allowing both talented and not-so hackers to provide new and exciting things based on Google's technology. We've already seen some interesting stuff through use of the search engine (Googlewhack, Googlefight, Googlism, et al).

Gmaps Pedometer is a cool hack of Google Maps that allows you to record the distance you travel through various checkpoints. It's great for runners (like me) because it allows you to find the distance on non-standard routes, like running paths through parks or around a lake. It's also got a completely useless calorie counting feature that I don't recommend, and a route saving feature that I do. In fact, check out the 4km route I've been running with my dog.

Link

Birthday Calculator

I'm not sure who this Paul Sadowski guy is, but he's got an interesting birthday calculator. It tell you all sorts of information about your birthday: ordinary stuff like your day of birth and zodiac sign, and not-so ordinary stuff like the phase of the moon and date of conception. Too bad it doesn't have place of conception: I'd love to see how many people have "Back seat of mom's car."

I also recommend the Name Calculator page for those people into numerology. Not that anyone is.

Link to Name Calculator
Link to Birthday Calculator (Thanks, Lee)

Fun Flickr Tools

Flickr can be a fun toy in and of itself, but what really sets it apart is all the tools available for people to do cool things with. I lean toward these ones at Flagrant Disregard as the most interesting, but as always, YMMV.

The card shown here was made with FD's Trading Card Maker tool. I think it would be hilarious to make a set featuring my family and friends, but I don't have enough photos!

Link

OMFG Google Calendar!!!1!eleven

My friends all know that I'm a huge Google apologist. Not that I think they're running their business in China very ethically, but for the most part, Google kicks a lot of ass. I use their e-mail almost exclusively, I use their newsreader, and I use their blogging service. Oh, and I use their search, too.

That's why I'm so excited that the long-awaited Google Calendar has finally been released! Now I need to figure out how to make it sync with my Palm Pilot.

Link

3D Tracking

The service 3D Tracking has a wicked GPS demo online to show-off their premium service. Their free service is interesting and more than worth the amount of money they charge, but the upgrade is enough to make geeks like me start drooling with the possibilities.

Right now, the demo's set up to show you how you could use this service to monitor a fleet of trucks, or something similar. But I'd like to see them open the software to allow casual surfers (like me!) to view anyone's public GPS data. What a hoot it would be to be able to track my friend through Europe on his vacation!

Link (Thanks, Godspeed!)

Phone Notify

This is a great little web gadget that I'm totally enthralled with. It allows you to send a computerized phone message to anyone's phone number -- even cell phones!

The text to speech engine is a little crusty, but you do get your choice of voices: entering a number between 0-9 in the VoiceID field provides a good mix of male and female voices, some of which are more understandable than others.

FeedMonkey does not advise using this service for any kind of illegal activity -- there's even a disclaimer on the site that threats and things of that nature will be reported to authorities -- but it's a great way to prank your family and some of your close friends.

There are two improvements I'd like to see: add a feature to phone at a specific time so you can set phone reminders to yourself, and get rid of that annoying IP address information at the end of the message!

Link